


your song's no good 'round here

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Series: there will be music despite everything (sw/mcu au) [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Established Relationship, Gen, Pre-Relationship, SHIELD, cassian and jyn are the most 'will they or won't they' couple of all time, roz and jenna are cameos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 11:46:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9180163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: “I ran with a resistance group, a little while back, but then I left after a while,” says Jyn, skirting as close to the truth as she can get. “That was how SHIELD found me: lost and adrift. I thought I was doing good, but--”“But now you don’t know whose lies you were telling,” Natasha supplies. “If it was SHIELD’s, or HYDRA’s.”or: Rogue One, and the fall of SHIELD.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title is, for once, not from a poem! it's from Jukebox the Ghost's "Under My Skin", following in the tradition of Rogue One being the oddball movie in the Star Wars franchise.
> 
>  **huge Rogue One spoilers here.** also spoilers for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, but that's been out for years now, so.

Captain America goes rogue, and spectacularly at that. Jyn knows this, despite having had her head buried in files all morning, because Cassian storms inside the safehouse’s bedroom and says, “Remember when I said Skywalker was the worst assignment I ever had?”

Jyn looks up from the file on the Aquino assassination, at nearly the same time Bodhi glances up from the one on Kennedy. “Didn’t Skywalker flirt with you?” says Bodhi. “What did Captain Rogers do?”

“Went completely off the grid,” says Cassian.

“Captain America,” says Jyn, “went _off the grid_.”

“Apparently so,” says Cassian, “but not before knocking out half of Rumlow’s STRIKE team, breaking out of an elevator and falling from about thirty feet, and also downing a plane.” He lets out a groan, pinches the bridge of his nose, and slumps into a chair. “I keep saying we should get actual shield generators,” he mutters.

“We don’t have the tech yet,” says Bodhi, with a little shrug. Jyn thinks of Kaytoo, currently knocking around as their van’s AI. “So what do we do?”

“Captain Rogers is in the wind, so we can’t talk to him,” says Jyn. “But I have Agent 13’s number, she was shadowing Captain Rogers at the time.” She pulls out her phone, scrolls down to Sharon’s number, and very quietly renames her to _Carter_ from _Hot Agent_. “She might know something. Her or Jenna Arbor, she and I worked together one, I know she helped with defrosting Rogers way back.”

“You or Bodhi talk to her, I think she’s still got a grudge against me for that fiasco in Barcelona,” says Cassian.

Bodhi muffles a snort of laughter, and says, “Now that I think about it, she’s, uh, very keen on Jyn.”

“She was very nice and I was very up for it, and anyway, we’re sex friends, nothing more,” says Jyn, a little defensively. “Anyway, sordid details of my sex life aside, Bodhi, you wanna take this?”

“No, I’m calling Barton,” says Bodhi. “According to this file,” and he gestures to an open file with pictures of the international airport in Beirut, “there’s a high chance his mission in Beirut ended so badly because of this Soldier.”

“I’ll lean on Romanov,” says Cassian. “She encountered him in Odessa.” He taps his fingers against his thigh, and says, “Hey, either of you heard back from Baze and Chirrut yet?”

“They’re still working Hill, so, no,” says Jyn. She runs a hand through her hair, adds, “If Chirrut’s right, and Fury’s not actually dead--”

“We’ll give him hell,” says Cassian. “Didn’t know Jedi could be this paranoid.”

“Can’t really blame him,” says Bodhi, leafing through the file. “Jedi, remember?”

Jyn thinks of Order 66, of a world where Imperial flags flew over the corpses of a thousand Jedi. “Okay, got it,” she says.

\--

Romanov does not check out.

Mostly, Cassian finds out, this is because she’s gone off with Rogers.

He finds this out because Rumlow tracks him down as he’s making his way down to records and says, “Alvarez! How long’s it been?”

Cassian smiles tightly at him. Chirrut’s never trusted Rumlow, or anyone under Rumlow, and Cassian’s learned to trust what Chirrut says about a person--it’s funny what the man can catch, when everyone seems to dismiss him for his blindness.

Besides, something about Rumlow just rubs him the wrong way.

“Rumlow,” he says, as casually as he can manage. “Beijing was, what, four years ago?”

“Four years, huh?” says Rumlow, with a smile. On anyone else, it would be charming. On him, there’s something empty about it, something soulless. “Hey, weren’t you teamed up with Romanov, then?”

“A few times while Barton was on leave, yeah,” says Cassian, vaguely, as Rumlow falls into step beside him, still smiling that empty, soulless smile. “Why ask?”

“You’re a perceptive fella. She ever do anything kinda off to you?” says Rumlow.

Cassian pauses. “What happened?” he asks suspiciously. “And don’t ask me why I don’t know, I was in London up until six hours ago, and--well, you know what happened there.” A lie, but it passes, judging by the way Rumlow sighs.

“You must’ve gotten it late,” he says. “Can’t blame you, alien invasions do that. Just--Captain America’s been declared a fugitive. SHIELD’s looking for him.”

“What, really?” says Cassian, feigning shock, stopping in his tracks. Between him and Rumlow, he knows for a fact that he’s a much better liar. “What does this have to do with Romanov?”

“She ran off with him,” says Rumlow, his brow creasing with worry. Cassian has to give him this, he’s good at faking worry, but his eyes are fixed on Cassian, as if trying to tease out every detail from his body language.

“Shit,” says Cassian, shifting from one foot to the other, his brow creasing. Two can play at that game. “How the fuck did that happen?”

“We don’t know yet,” says Rumlow, “that’s why I’m asking the people she’s worked with. Did she ever--”

“No,” says Cassian. “God, no. She seemed to like working under SHIELD well enough, I don’t know why she’d suddenly run off with a fugitive.” He has his suspicions, actually, because Jyn’s been texting him about some discrepancies in the files that she’s found, about how the Winter Soldier couldn’t have possibly been able to foil some of these missions unless he had inside help. “Why’s Captain America a fugitive, anyway?”

“Fuck, they didn’t tell you?” says Rumlow. “Yeah--you know that messed up thing that happened with Fury?”

“A little, yeah,” says Cassian, evasively. “Bodhi said something along those lines.”

“Radwan?” says Rumlow, his tongue tripping over Bodhi’s false name, making it sound more like _rad one_. “The--jumpy one, right?”

Cassian’s smile grows tighter. He hadn’t even believed it was possible. “Friend of mine,” he says, _and someone I trust more than you._ “Didn’t say _why_ , though.”

Rumlow sighs. “Captain Rogers knows some important information about Fury’s death that he didn’t tell us,” he says.

“So we’re classifying him a fugitive?” says Cassian, a little of his disdain leaking into his tone. “Him and Romanov for keeping secrets?”

“This kind of secret?” says Rumlow, as he and Cassian step out into the stairwell. “Yes.” He sighs, says, “Look, I know you and Romanov had--a fling--”

“Is that what everyone thinks we had,” says Cassian, flatly, resisting the urge to punch him in the face for assuming. Damn the SHIELD gossip mill, it’s just as bad as (if not even _worse_ than) the Rebel Alliance gossip mill. “For fuck’s sake, Rumlow.”

\--

The thing about being Force-sensitive is that sometimes, there are people who shine so brightly in the Force that Chirrut can pick them out in a crowd, every time. Skywalker, the one time Cassian had brought Chirrut along on Skywalker-watching duty all those years ago, had been dizzyingly bright, but there’d been a thread of anger wound tight around his presence, staining the light, turning him half-dark.

Captain America, however, is something else entirely. He burns like a torch in the Force, despite not being able to sense anything through the Force himself, burns like a sun, yet unlike Skywalker--who always seems to be standing on the edge between the darkness and the light--Captain America’s presence is almost pure light, has somehow remained that way despite the war he went through.

Almost.

There’s a thread of anger wound around him, much like Skywalker’s. The difference is that Captain America’s personal code is much stronger than the anger in him, that most of the time the anger gets turned to serve something far greater than himself. Chirrut is impressed, to say the least.

So he doesn’t believe SHIELD, when it declares a manhunt for Captain America. Neither do the rest of his team, as Chirrut finds out, because they’ve seen what Chirrut already figured out on his first meeting with Rogers--if Captain Rogers has gone rogue and split off from SHIELD, then there’s a damn good reason for it.

Also, for all of Agent Romanov’s expertise in stealth, neither she nor Rogers know anything about the Force, so it’s easy enough for Chirrut to track them down once he’s gotten within their vicinity. He just has to follow the blazing light within the Force.

And to think, he and Baze came here to try and contact Hill.

It’s easy enough to keep track of Rogers. It’s not so easy to avoid Rumlow and his team, when they come into the mall.

“They’re here,” says Chirrut, as he and Baze stand guard outside the store. To anyone else, they just look like a blind man and his friend, taking a moment to rest.

“Rumlow?” Baze asks.

“Yes,” says Chirrut. He tilts his head to the right, listens for heavy and deliberate footsteps, the crackle of a walkie-talkie, the hollow sound of so many concealed weapons. “How many?”

“On this floor?” says Baze, turning to press a kiss to his temple, masking his words as a gesture of affection. “Three, including Rumlow. Three on the second floor, they’re working their way down.”

“Hm,” says Chirrut.

Baze sighs.

“What?”

“I know that sound,” says Baze. “And that look. You’re planning something.”

“You know me so well,” says Chirrut, lightly. “On an unrelated topic, I feel the need to stretch my legs.”

“And it just so happens to be directly in their path,” says Baze.

“Something like that,” says Chirrut, and gets a friendly bump to his shoulder. He doesn’t have to ask if Baze will catch him when he plays the part of a helplessly blind man--he knows he will, always.

\--

Steve looks around, and says, “I make--one coming at us.” That’s weird, it’s uncharacteristic of Rumlow to be so sloppy and put so few agents on a target. It puts him even more on edge, makes him glance over his shoulder more.

“Shut up,” says Natasha, her own gaze roving around and spotting a very familiar blind man and his very tall, very burly companion apologizing profusely to a hard-looking woman, a STRIKE agent by the looks of her, “and put your arm around me, laugh at something I said.”

Steve does exactly that, but throws another glance over his shoulder, just in case. Something’s up here, he can feel it, and it all has something to do with the drive sitting heavy in his jacket pocket.

“And act casual,” Natasha murmurs.

“I _am_ ,” Steve mutters, annoyed.

“If this is you acting casual, I hate to see how you are when you’re actually casual,” Natasha teases.

Steve huffs out a laugh, despite the situation they’re in--they’re the two most wanted people in Washington right now, surrounded by STRIKE agents, yet somehow the laugh bubbles out of his chest anyway.

“See?” says Natasha, triumphant, grinning up at him. It’s almost genuine, that smile. “I knew you could do it.”

\--

Chirrut and Baze come back with Hill in tow.

Hill says, “I don’t know whether to be impressed you guys figured it out or annoyed.”

“Let’s go with impressed,” Jyn suggests. Out of everyone on the team, she and Chirrut seem to delight the most in snappy one-liners, though Bodhi’s seen Cassian do it quite a few times and smile to himself afterwards.

“How is he, anyway?” says Bodhi, handing Hill a file as he clambers over Jyn. Their van’s pretty comfortable, if one ignores Kaytoo’s voice coming out of nowhere, currently engaged with arguing with Cassian over the directions Hill’s provided them with, but sometimes Bodhi feels a little cramped, inside. “Also, I managed to clean up some photos of the Winter Soldier.”

Hill opens the file, leafs through it, and says, “Fuck. Are any of you seeing this?”

“Certainly not,” says Chirrut, dryly.

“Seeing what?” Baze demands. Hill passes him the file, and his brow furrows, as if he’s piecing something together. “I’ve seen this man before,” he says.

Bodhi blinks at him. “What, really?” he asks, caught off-guard.

“Not in person,” Baze clarifies. “In a museum. There’s a memorial dedicated to him in the exhibit on Captain Rogers in the Smithsonian.”

Something cold twists around Bodhi’s gut. He’s been to the exhibit, once or twice, and he remembers the memorial there, the voice saying _Barnes is the only Howling Commando to give his life for his country_.

Yet here is his face in 1952, 1967, 1971, 1986, 1991, almost the same from one picture to another. Impossible, and yet--

His hands shake. He runs his left hand through his hair. They’re all impossibly here--he still remembers the grenade. At least Barnes is _from_ this universe.

Chirrut says it first. “Barnes,” he says, brow furrowing.

“Shit,” says Jyn, eyes widening.

Hill says, “He’s going to want to see this,” and Bodhi does not have to ask her who _he_ is.

\--

As it turns out, they don’t have to tell Rogers. When Hill shows up at the rendezvous point with Captain Rogers, Agent Romanov and some stranger who introduces himself as Sam Wilson in tow, Bodhi hands him the file before they all climb inside.

“You’ll want to see this,” he says.

Rogers opens it up, then hands it back quickly.

“I know,” he says, raw and sad and looking, for a moment, so _old_ , as worn as Bodhi sometimes feels. “I saw.”

\--

“Been a while, Ling,” says Natasha, as Chirrut wraps a bandage around her shoulder. It’s a temporary measure, meant to keep her from dying in their van, and not for the first time Chirrut finds himself wishing one of them had thought to keep the first-aid kit stocked. And that Cassian had come along, because he’s much better at this than Chirrut is.

“That it has, Natasha,” he says. “I hear you’ve gone rogue now.”

“I hear you and Xianlang had an exciting time at the mall,” says Natasha, dryly. Chirrut doesn’t need to see to know she’s smiling at him.

“Quite,” says Chirrut, with a smile.

“Don’t move too much,” Baze grumbles. “You’ve already lost a pint.”

“Does he mother-hen you this much?” says Natasha. “God, it’s like Clint all over again.”

“I wouldn’t know,” says Chirrut, innocently, “I’ve never seen him at his worst.”

“Oh, god,” says Sam Wilson, who shines in the Force like a small star. _The Falcon_ , they’d called him, after the extendable wings on his back, and Chirrut thinks briefly that for a man to have _survived_ an active warzone with metal wings, the Force must’ve been with him. “It’s like Riley all over again.”

Baze sighs, exasperated, and says, “I thought I had enough of this in Harbin.” _Jedha,_ he means, and Natasha, beside Chirrut, shifts, restless and curious.

“He likes my jokes,” Chirrut informs her. “He’s just very bad at showing them.”

“No, I don’t,” says Baze, with a huff.

“I can hear you laughing,” Chirrut says.

“He’s got you there,” says Wilson, with a snicker.

“Are you bickering again?” comes Kaytoo’s impatient and slightly tinny tone, somewhere above them.

Chirrut huffs out a laugh, taps the roof of the van with his finger, and says, “Here I thought by now you would be used to this.”

“Sadly, I am,” says Kaytoo.

“Where’d you get that AI?” says Natasha, shifting restlessly. Her hair brushes over Chirrut’s fingers as she looks upward.

“I’ll tell you if you stop moving around so much,” says Chirrut, sternly, steadying her as she sways. _Swaying_ , that’s not a good sign. “Kaytoo hasn’t forgotten the last time someone nearly died of blood loss in the van.”

“Neither have I,” says Hill, dryly, “considering the last time someone nearly died of blood loss here, it was me.”

\--

Rogers is silent throughout the whole trip, up in front. Bodhi glances at him, a few times, and every time he catches him staring down at the file that they’ve assembled on the Winter Soldier, brow creased, jaw tensed.

He doesn’t ask if Rogers is okay. Instead he says, “I’m--sorry. About your friend.” He regrets the apology the moment it’s out of his mouth, it’s so empty, so small a thing, to what Rogers must be feeling. He wonders about his mother, for a second--someone must’ve told her, when he defected, said _I’m sorry about your son._

He wonders briefly if she thought about him, before the holy city of Jedha turned to ash and dust.

Rogers lets out a breath, snapping Bodhi out of his thoughts. “Don’t be, this wasn’t your fault,” he says. It’s strange, but Bodhi thinks he doesn’t look much like the Captain America that everyone around him seems to revere. He just looks like a tired soldier, with nowhere to call home, with his downcast eyes and slumped shoulders and bowed head. “It’s probably more mine, when you think about it.”

“It wasn’t,” says Bodhi. “ _Your_ fault, I mean.”

“Listen to Radwan, he’s much smarter than you,” calls Romanov from the backseat, her voice only wavering slightly from the blood loss.

“I predict a 54% chance that Agent Romanov will die of blood loss here if she keeps shifting around so much,” says Kaytoo above them, dispassionate as ever.

Rogers only jumps slightly.

“You get used to him,” says Bodhi, reassuringly. “He, uh. He’s very blunt, though.”

“Which has saved your life on multiple occasions, as I recall,” Kaytoo shoots back. “Would you like me to list them all? There are twenty-eight separate and distinct occurrences.”

“No, no, definitely not,” says Bodhi, hurriedly, navigating them carefully on a rough path, surrounded by trees. This would be easier on a helicopter, he’s always been a better pilot than a driver, but helicopters are conspicuous and right now, that’s the last thing they need. “Um. What was he like? Barnes, I mean.”

“He was the best man I knew,” says Rogers, softly, “and the best friend I ever had.” He pauses a moment, then says, “You know, I’ve lost count of how many times Bucky saved my ass? And when he was counting on me--”

He cuts himself off, looks down at the file again.

“HYDRA must’ve done something to him,” he says, sounding much harder now, much more like the military commander Bodhi expected. “He didn’t recognize me when we saw each other on the causeway, they must’ve continued to experiment on him after he--after he fell.”

Perhaps the worst thing is that Bodhi _can_ imagine what he’s talking about. He’d known a few people, back in the Empire, who had implants embedded in their heads that made them _more efficient_ , at the cost of their personhood. Something similar might’ve happened with Barnes, to turn him into the Winter Soldier.

Then something clicks.

“HYDRA?” he says. “I thought they went down.”

“They didn’t,” says Rogers.

“Operation Paperclip,” says Romanov, from the back. “SHIELD was a part of that.”

Bodhi grips the steering wheel tighter, knuckles paling. He remembers his history lessons, Operation Paperclip had been America poaching scientists from the defeated Germany after the war, ones who’d worked in the Nazi regime, ones who worked in HYDRA. Some went to SHIELD, and--

How many of the people he’d known in SHIELD, outside of Rogue One, were secretly working for HYDRA, he wonders. It makes his stomach churn, makes bile rise in his throat, when he considers the idea.

He thought he’d stopped working for the Empire years ago, _damn it_.

They pull up near the entrance, and Bodhi helps Romanov out of the van, lets her swing her good arm around him and holds her up. Chirrut is beside her, hand still pressing a cloth over her shoulder, and they’re the first to walk inside.

\--

After the briefing, Jyn finds Natasha, her shoulder all bandaged up, perched on the railing of the hideout’s roof, while Captain Rogers and his new friend Wilson have gone off to fuck knows where to steal something.

“I thought Barton was the only one who did any perching,” Jyn says, by way of greeting. “Agent Romanov. How’s the shoulder?”

“Agent Ehren,” says Natasha. “He does more than his fair share, but I like to indulge myself sometimes.” She huffs out a breath, and says, “And my shoulder’s fine.”

Jyn steps closer, leans on the railing, hands dangling off the edge. “Lito wanted to talk to you,” she says, using Cassian’s false name. “When you went rogue. We were looking for Fury’s shooter, and he figured he could ask you.”

“He wouldn’t have gotten anything,” says Natasha. “I looked for the Winter Soldier too. Nobody else could’ve shot like that, and I should know.” She smiles, dagger-sharp. “He taught me.”

“Revealing all your secrets now?” says Jyn. “I’m shocked.”

“Not really,” says Natasha, lightly. “A girl’s got to have a few.” She taps her fingernails along the railing. “So. SHIELD and HYDRA, huh.”

“Bastards,” Jyn pronounces, her gut still twisting in knots at the thought. Rumlow had been obviously evil, but Sitwell had been--not a good friend, but she’d liked him well enough. To think of him, and too many people in SHIELD and in her own circle of friends, as members of the organization closest to the Empire that this world has--

Bile rises in her throat. She swallows it back.

“You too?” says Natasha, quietly, all trace of teasing gone. Of course this would’ve hit her harder than most, Jyn thinks, she’d come to SHIELD for--for redemption, absolution, some way to repent for everything she’d done.

“I ran with a resistance group, a little while back, but then I left after a while,” says Jyn, skirting as close to the truth as she can get. “That was how SHIELD found me: lost and adrift. I thought I was doing good, but--”

“But now you don’t know whose lies you were telling,” Natasha supplies. “If it was SHIELD’s, or HYDRA’s.”

“Yeah,” says Jyn. Not all her missions were with Rogue One, after all. Was this how her father felt, when he realized what his research was leading to? Sick horror, guilt, shame, anger? She’ll ask him after all this is done, she decides. “And who I trusted that I shouldn’t have.”

“Pretty idealistic for a spy who just found out she was secretly working for an evil organization the whole time,” says Natasha. “Talking about trust and all.”

“Teams are built on trust,” says Jyn, who’s been lying to Natasha since the day they met, “as rebellions are built on hope.”

“This isn’t a rebellion, Jen,” says Natasha, more weary and tired than a woman of her apparent age should be. Jyn glances sideways at her, wonders--not for the first time--how old Natasha Romanov really is. “And you’re being a lot more philosophical than usual.”

“We’re going against a parasitic organization that illegitimately took over the one we’re working for and branded us traitors,” says Jyn. “And directly acting against their direct orders and assisting a fugitive. I think that counts as rebellion, right?”

“That’s one way of putting it,” says Natasha, legs swinging.

Jyn breathes out, watches the clouds drift across the sky. One of the last sights she ever saw, in her home galaxy, was the blue skies of Scarif, before they were swallowed by the Death Star’s blast. She had known at some point on Scarif that none of them would make it out alive--not before she landed, no, but at some point after Kaytoo’s death, after Cassian fell, after she climbed up onto the tower and looked up to see the skies.

She feels something all too similar to the knowledge sinking into her gut now. They might die, bringing down those helicarriers. They might die, if the Winter Soldier enters the fray--and Jyn knows, with a sudden rock-solid clarity, that he _will_.

“How would you put it?” she asks.

“Doing the right thing,” says Natasha. “Wiping out the red.”

Jyn closes her eyes and breathes in, then out. Her heart beats steadily, stubbornly.

“Redemption, in other words,” she says.

“Mm, something like that,” says Natasha, casual as ever. Jyn opens her eyes, meets Natasha’s cool green gaze. “You up for kidnapping a member of the World Security Council, by any chance?”

“Sure,” says Jyn, dryly. “Been wanting to do that for years.”

“Great, because with my shoulder like this, I’m going to need some help,” says Natasha, as she turns around on the railing and hops off onto solid ground. “Your boyfriend, can he drive?”

“Lito is not actually my boyfriend,” says Jyn.

“Goddammit,” says Natasha, unhappily, “I have to pay Clint’s protégé now. She’s never going to let me live this down.”

\--

“The price of freedom is high, and it’s a price I’m willing to pay,” says Captain Rogers, his voice strong, his presence in the Force a burning torch that attracts, that warms, that _burns_. “And if I’m the only one, then so be it.”

A breath.

“But I’m willing to bet I’m not.”

There’s a moment’s awed silence after he turns the mic off. Chirrut lets himself bask in it, in the Force’s will moving in and around them, taking hold of the moment and of their camaraderie.

Then Jyn says, “I’ve made better speeches.”

“Yes, with my help,” Cassian mutters, and Chirrut refrains from laughing at the both of them and their own well-worn argument.

“Did you just make that up off the top of your head?” says Wilson. “Or have you been rehearsing?”

“Rehearsing,” says Chirrut.

“Did Captain America just _guilt-trip_ our colleagues?” says Baze beside him, exasperated. They’re standing guard now near the door, as detailed in the plan, and Chirrut cocks his head, listening for the click of weapons, the sound of heavy footsteps.

“I wouldn’t call it guilt-tripping,” Captain Rogers begins, as self-effacing as ever.

“It was guilt-tripping,” says Cassian, fastening his rifle to his back from the sound of his strap. “Let’s get moving. It might’ve been a pretty speech, but HYDRA will be trying its damnedest to get those ships up in the air.”

“If they do,” says Wilson, “we’ll get them down.”

Wilson and Captain Rogers leave first. Jyn follows on their heels, but Chirrut grabs her by the shoulder before she steps out past the threshold.

“May the Force be with you,” he says.

“May the Force be with all of us,” Jyn responds.

“We’re going to need it,” Baze mutters, as Jyn hurries away, the sound of her light footsteps echoing down the hall.

Cassian follows soon after, and says, “The more things change, huh?”

“The more they stay the same,” says Baze.

Hill does not say anything as Cassian leaves, but an office chair rolls along the floor, her fingernails hit the keys. “Okay, I’m in,” she says. “May the Force be with us.”

\--

The helicarriers rise.

Cassian looks up from the scope of his sniper rifle, and not for the first time in his life (lives?), feels dread curl around his gut and seep into his bones, its claws digging into his lungs.

A planet killer, they’d called the Death Star once, a weapon of immense power. He looks up at the Insight helicarriers, awesome and awful and terribly twisted.

He wonders what the difference is, between these flying atrocities and the Empire’s planet killer.

\--

“I didn’t know Hill was a _Star Wars_ fan,” says Wilson, as they step out onto the tarmac.

“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about her,” says Jyn. Cassian’s already set himself up somewhere above them, picking off HYDRA goons as they come towards them to try and block them, but he’s still just one sniper, and there’s a whole swath of HYDRA to cut through. She takes out her baton.

“She is a spy,” says Captain Rogers.

“How do we know the good guys from the bad?” says Wilson, steering the subject away from Hill.

“If they’re shooting at you, they’re bad,” says Captain Rogers, the one wearing the red, white, and blue target.

“Can’t argue with that,” says Jyn. “Hey, Wilson, you willing to play taxi?”

“You know what would be easier,” Wilson grumbles good-naturedly, “if we’d swiped just _one more_ pack from Fort Mead.” But when they jump, she’s hanging on tight to him, the wind in her face and adrenaline pumping through her blood.

\--

“Thanks for the ride, ma’am,” says Bodhi, politely, to the SHIELD agent who’d hurriedly let him and Fury through into one of SHIELD’s backup hangars.

The agent nods, tying her dark hair back. “Welcome,” she says. “Go kick some ass, Agent. And, um, Director. I guess?”

“Agent Solomon,” says Fury, “remind me to tell the next director to give you a promotion.”

Agent Solomon gives a strangled squawk, then whips around to the entrance, where someone is calling for her to open up. “I’m not sure I’ll be around to accept it,” she says. “Go, go--I’ll cover you.”

“You could--” Bodhi starts, for a second seeing Jyn, seeing one of the people who’d come with them to Scarif and died alongside them. “You could come onboard,” he says, desperately.

Solomon smiles, sadly. “I could,” she says, “but I think you would benefit more if I stayed here. _Go._ ” She takes her gun out of her holster, takes position beside the crate as Bodhi breathes out, then starts prepping the helicopter.

 _May the Force be with you,_ thinks Bodhi, glancing back at Solomon one last time.

They lift off to the sounds of gunfire.

\--

Jyn goes first.

The targeting blade is light in her vest pocket, and strangely so. It should be heavier, it certainly _feels_ heavier, for the responsibility and the hope that it represents.

 _Just like Scarif all over again,_ she thinks, briefly. Only this time she’s not sneaking around an Imperial facility, but sneaking around an airborne helicarrier. She wishes she could say this out loud, see Cassian’s face and hear his tired chuckle in answer, but too much is at stake now.

Instead, what she says is a frantic, “I’m pinned down, I need help, I repeat--”

She hears the shield, whirling through the air, the hollow sound of it bouncing off crates and the meatier noise of it hitting people.

“Go,” says Captain Rogers, as Jyn races out from under cover, a gun in one hand and her baton in the other, her kyber pendant warm against her chest, “I’ll cover you.”

“Thanks,” says Jyn, vaulting over a crate. Wilson flies overhead, drawing fire away from her and from Captain Rogers, then away to the other helicarrier. Jyn doesn’t look, tries not to look, but she hears the sound of turrets firing anyway.

This might just turn out just like Scarif did, she thinks.

It’s not a happy thought.

\--

This, Sam decides, is absolutely going onto the list of Worst Days Ever.

Rockets. _Rockets._ Of all things to have to deal with, he’s got to deal with rockets. He squashes down on the rising panic in his chest--he can’t panic now, Steve is counting on him--and twists his body around, to avoid the rockets.

He still hears them explode. For a second he glances to the side, almost expecting to see Riley, but that almost costs him, and he veers away to the right before a rocket can bring him down or worse.

Goddammit. God _dammit_ , if he sees a HYDRA goon, he’s going to punch them in the face.

Okay, concentrate. Steve is counting on him, Hill is counting on him, his country is counting on him _again_ , so he pulls himself up, deftly dodging the incoming shots and cursing as one comes too close and explodes near him. Too close, _too close_ , he’s rusty at this.

“Hey, Cap, Rogue Two,” he yells, “I found those bad guys we were talking about!”

“You okay?” says Steve over the comm.

“I’m not dead yet,” says Sam, swerving right to let a shot pass him by. “Rogue Two, what’s your status?”

“In transit, give me a second,” says Jen.

\--

“Falcon, status?”

“ _Engaging!_ ”

“Rogue Two, status?”

“ _Also_ engaging!”

“Rogue Leader, status?”

“Currently engaged, I’ll get back to you in a sec, _step the fuck off you snake-headed bastard_ \--”

“I blame Baze,” says Chirrut, breaking off from his quiet chant.

“This is _not_ all my fault, Kaytoo had something to do with it,” says Baze, sniping a couple of HYDRA agents that have managed to break through the door. Again. “We need to better reinforce these things,” he says.

“They _were_ reinforced,” says Hill. “But you people just needed to be dramatic about your entrances.”

\--

“Nine minutes, Rogue Two.”

“Working on it,” says Jyn, jumping off a crate and bringing down a man that she had lunch with just three weeks ago. She slips his machine gun out of his hands, her semi-automatic having gotten kicked off the helicarrier a minute (an hour?) ago, and mows down the next wave.

She tries not to think about how many of them she’d known, and moves on, not mourning them. Captain Rogers is just behind her, covering her back like he’d promised, and she kicks the door in and finds herself on the receiving end of a blow from a woman who’d introduced her to the best diner food in town, so many years ago.

Jyn recovers, kicks the woman’s knee out, and shoots her dead.

Once upon a time she’d called Cassian no better than a Stormtrooper, for following the orders given to him by the Rebel Alliance’s High Command, for being willing to pull the trigger on her father. What does that make her now?

She can’t look at it now. She _can’t_.

“I’m in,” she reports. “And on my way.”

\--

“Are you sure you’re ready for the world to see you as you really are?”

Natasha looks up at Pierce. She smiles, dagger-sharp, even despite her heart hammering against her chest at what she’s about to do, even despite her own private fears whispering _what if what if what if_. “Are you?” she asks.

She takes a vicious amount of glee in the flash of anger in Pierce’s eyes.

\--

Jyn slips the blade in as Rogers tussles with the biggest HYDRA goon they’ve seen on this helicarrier.

“Alpha locked,” she reports, and rushes to knock the goon out with her baton.

\--

“Falcon, where are you now?”

“Had to take a detour!”

\--

Cassian’s not having the best of days, so far. Then again, finding out that the organization you’ve been working under for years has been infested by its evil counterpart for a long time is bound to ruin anyone’s week.

“Hail HY--”

Cassian shoots the man dead. Belatedly, he remembers--he’d run into the man just two weeks ago, and the two of them had commiserated over teams and the Cubs never winning. He feels nothing but disgust now, at the man, at himself, at HYDRA or SHIELD or both or maybe they’re just the one thing, really.

Who can tell anymore?

He steps over the man’s corpse, then sets up his equipment once more. Sharon Carter is down there, evacuating people from the building while gunfire roars around them, trying to get as many noncombatants out as possible, and Cassian may just be one sniper, but he’s a damn good sniper.

He takes out the other sniper that’s picking off SHIELD support, then focuses on taking down HYDRA’s agents before they can take down Carter or the people she’s escorting out.

“Rogue Leader, do you copy?” Hill’s voice crackles over the comm.

“I copy,” says Cassian. “Agent 13’s evacuating people under fire, I’m currently engaged with the other snipers here. Could use a little help--”

“Rogue Leader,” says another voice, one that Cassian recognizes from Scarif, “this is Melshi. Need a little help?”

“You’re a sight for sore eyes, Melshi,” says Cassian. “Or--a voice for sore ears, anyway.”

\--

“Bravo locked,” Sam reports, stepping onto a railing and jumping off with a hoot, wings deploying just a few seconds later.

God, he’s missed flying.

\--

“All SHIELD pilots, scramble! We’re the only air support Captain Rogers has got--”

The Winter Soldier, silent as always, takes aim and fires.

\--

Fury steps through the glass doors. He cuts an impressive figure even with his arm in a sling, all in black and glaring at Pierce with his good eye.

Bodhi is much less impressive, and unlike Agent Romanov and Fury, he’s not carrying a gun--his hands shake too badly with a weapon in them for him to shoot straight. But he walks in anyway, head held high.

“Did you get my flowers?” says Pierce. When no one answers, he sighs, and says, “Well, I’m glad you’re alive, Nick. And here.”

“Really?” says Fury, tone cold. “Because I thought you had me killed.”

“Fortunately for us, that didn’t stick,” says Pierce, coolly. “After all, you know how the game works. Better than anyone, in fact.”

“So why make me head of SHIELD?” says Fury. The two of them are circling each other now, like two wolves beholding each other for the first time, snapping and snarling. Bodhi’s hand shakes a little too much, and he steps closer to Romanov.

“You all right?” he whispers.

“I’ve had better days,” Romanov whispers back, with a tired smile.

“Your shoulder?”

“Twinges a bit,” Romanov admits, “but otherwise, I’m fine. Tell Ling I didn’t pull a stitch.”

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you,” says Bodhi, feeling a little bit better, despite Pierce trying to needle Fury in front of them.

“Forgiven,” Romanov says.

\--

Chirrut knocks the next two HYDRA goons unconscious, and says, “Did I step on your foot?”

“You blind _fucking_ \--”

Baze shoots that one in the head. Hill shoots the other one coming up behind Chirrut, with a deadly accuracy that only the Force can provide.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” says Chirrut, mildly. “Also, you almost shot me!”

“Which one?” says Baze.

“Both of you!” says Chirrut, offended.

\--

Jyn calls first, and says, “Wilson, can you fly with someone on your back?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Come pick me up.”

\--

Jen is much lighter, Sam decides, than Steve. Also, far less crazy, because unlike Jen, who called him first and then climbed onto his back, Steve fucking _jumps off a helicarrier mid-call_.

Seriously. Sam would understand if Steve had wings, same as him, but nope, Steve is just one person with no jetpack fucking throwing himself off helicarriers mid-call, like an asshole.

“You’re a lot heavier than you look,” he tells Steve, once they’re safely on the third helicarrier.

“Had a big breakfast,” says Steve, which is just even more asshole-ish of him, seeing as Sam _cooked_ that breakfast.

“Uh, guys--” Jen starts. She doesn’t get very far, because then Steve’s old friend Bucky Barnes comes barreling through, knocking her into a plane. She gives a little groan, shaken by suddenly having a goddamn nonagenarian with a goddamn metal arm _barrel into her_.

Barnes then kicks Steve _right through a fence._

Sam reacts first, shouting for Steve and taking to the air, deploying his wings, but Barnes starts shooting at him, grabs his wing and drags him back. Sam curses, because this is Barnes and he is _not_ going to be able to--

Jen jumps on top of Barnes like a tiny little monkey, and tries to pull a wire around his neck. He tears her off him with ease, but she lands on her feet.

“Jen, come _on_ ,” says Sam, but he dives down to draw Barnes’ fire away from her.

Except Barnes doesn’t fire.

Instead, he deploys a grappling hook and tears one of Sam’s wings off.

The little _fucker_.

“Wilson!” calls Jen, scrambling to him. She fires shots at Barnes as Wilson gets to his feet, but Barnes flips in the air like the world’s deadliest goddamn ballerina, and then charges them both as Jen is still firing and shoves them both off the helicarrier.

Sam manages to grab on to her, detaching the other wing from his suit and deploying the parachute. No time to mourn, he tells himself. There’s still things to do.

They hit the roof of SHIELD HQ, feet-first. Not the best landing either of them could’ve made, certainly not Sam’s best landing, but Sam sees Jen stagger to her feet, sees the sniper on the roof turn to her, his eyes growing wide before he practically tackles her in a--

\--in a hug.

“Jyn!” says the guy--Lito, right, Lito Alvarez. Except, wait a second--

“Cassian,” breathes Jen, practically collapsing into Lito’s arms. (Cassian’s?)

“I’m missing something here,” says Sam, dryly.

The two of them freeze. Slowly, Jen looks up at Sam, and says, “Uh. Thanks. Um.”

“Keep going, keep going,” says Sam, crossing his arms and shaking his head. He hates being single, sometimes. “Just pretend I’m not even here, that’s cool. I gotta make a call anyway.”

\--

“Cap! Cap, come in, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m here! I’m still on the helicarrier. Where are you and Jen?”

“We’re grounded. The suit’s down, and Jen’s ankle doesn’t look too good. Sorry, Cap.”

“Don’t worry, I got it.”

\--

“Rumlow’s headed for the Council,” says Hill, watching Rumlow climb up a flight of stairs, “does anybody copy?”

“I copy,” says Cassian. Hill spares a brief moment to let herself feel sad, for how quickly Cassian speaks. “Where to?”

“Best guess,” says Hill, “northwest corner, 41st floor.”

“Got it,” says Cassian.

“Falcon,” says Hill, “you’re on evacuation detail. Rogue Two, can you walk?”

“With pain, but yes,” says Jyn, grimly determined.

“You’re with Falcon,” says Hill. “Agent 13’s going to need a lot of assistance getting SHIELD loyalists out, get to the west wing.”

\--

“Please don’t make me do this.”

\--

“Done,” says Natasha, pulling her phone out, “and it’s trending.”

\--

(Somewhere in London, Ahsoka stares at the trending tag on Twitter, and the size of the file that’s suddenly appeared.

“Skyguy?” she calls. “You might want to look at this.”

Anakin steps closer, leans over her shoulder, scans through the first few lines, and says, “Fuck me, Thor and Darcy are going to lose their shits.”)

\--

Bodhi’s hands shake too badly for him to shoot straight, but he aims the stolen gun at Pierce anyway. Two of the Council members have fallen, the stench of cooked flesh reminding Bodhi of--of too many things, but especially Scarif.

“Unless you want a two-inch hole in your sternum,” says Pierce, coolly, staring at Romanov, “I’d put that gun down.” He smiles, cold and cruel, and Bodhi cannot help but think of Krennic, of Tarkin, of the Imperial officers he used to work under. “That was armed the moment you pinned it on.”

Bodhi glances at Fury, whose jaw clenches.

They set their guns down.

\--

Cassian lands the first shot from under cover of a table, getting Rumlow in the leg.

Rumlow shoots back, and Cassian rolls out of the way of the shattered computers.

“Lito Alvarez,” spits Rumlow, taking off his jacket, as Cassian gets to his feet, circles him like a wary predator. “You know, HYDRA could’ve used you. You’re ruthless, you’re smart, you’re perceptive. All qualities we look for in our employees.”

“That’s funny, because I thought _straight, white, votes Republican_ was what HYDRA tended to look for,” says Cassian, aim steady. He’d had _lunch_ with this bastard, for all that they didn’t trust each other. “Give up. Widow’s already dumped all your secrets on the web. We’ll even give you a fair trial, which is a lot more than you deserve.”

“We don’t give up,” says Rumlow, smiling again, and this time there’s nothing charming about it, no pretense of kindness or warmth, “and we don’t show mercy. There are no prisoners with HYDRA, just order. And order only comes through--”

Cassian shoots at his head. Rumlow ducks, almost superhumanly fast, and Cassian has just enough time to register that he fucking _ducked_ before Rumlow decks him.

Cassian, in answer, punches him in the gut, then kicks out his leg.

“ _Fuck your order_ ,” Cassian spits.

\--

Jyn finds a young girl--an intern, Nance Winters--hidden under a table when she and Wilson do a hurried sweep through the offices. She crouches down, ignoring the pain shooting through her ankle, and says, “Hey, what are you still doing here, kid?”

“I’m _twenty-three_ ,” Winters says, her voice cracking, her eyes red. “I heard gunshots outside, what’s happening out there--”

“Hey,” says Wilson, much kinder than Jyn could ever hope to be, “hey--there’s a lot of shit going down outside, but we can get you out of here.”

“You want out of here, right?” says Jyn.

Winters nods.

“All right,” says Wilson, holding his hand out for Winters to grab, “come on up--”

“Agent Ehren!” calls another voice. Jyn glances up, sees a woman who’d once helped her break a particularly difficult code in exchange for help with a small experiment now aiming a gun at Wilson, and squashes whatever good feelings she had towards Jenna Arbor then and there. “Step away. You can still live through this fight.”

Jyn draws her own gun and says, “Let me guess, you’re HYDRA.”

“Ding, ding, give her a cookie,” says Arbor, dryly. “Look, for old times’ sakes, I’ll let you live. Just step away from the soldier.”

“Wilson?” says Jyn. “Get Winters out of here.”

“What about you?” says Wilson, getting Winters behind him.

“I’ll cover your back,” says Jyn, ignoring her ankle and keeping her eyes on Arbor. “Put the gun down, Arbor. For old times’ sakes.”

“Can’t,” says Arbor, gun still trained on Wilson. “You see, if HYDRA goes down, how can I keep my experiments going? The Separatists and the Empire don’t exist here, and there are so few universities willing to fund my research.”

“The _what_ ,” says Wilson.

“So you’re a _crazy_ HYDRA agent,” says Jyn, keeping a straight face while she mentally starts cursing up and down. Not everyone who’d come to this world had been a Rebel, she knows that, but she’d _thought_ \--dammit. “Good to know.”

“One with much and more to lose than you should her organization fall, Agent,” says Arbor. “Last warning. Step away.”

“Last warning,” Jyn echoes. “Put. The gun. Down.”

Arbor smiles, tightly. “Then I suppose we--” she starts.

Jyn shoots her first in the shoulder, getting her to drop the gun, and Wilson and Winters make a break for it. “Get out of here!” she yells after them, before pain explodes in her shoulder. She whips around, cursing, and shoots at Arbor again.

\--

“One minute,” says Hill. In the background, she can hear Chirrut chanting, _I’m one with the Force and the Force is with me, I’m one with the Force and the Force is with me, I’m one with--_

\--

“Firing in three, two, one--”

\--

“Charlie locked.”

Hill breathes out a sigh of relief, says, “Okay, Cap, get out of there.”

“Fire now,” Steve’s voice crackles over the comm, straining with effort. Somewhere in the Force, the torch of his presence is flickering. Chirrut, having gravitated to her side, bows his head.

“But Steve--” Hill starts.

“ _Do it!_ ” Steve orders, voice ringing with authority. Hill closes her eyes, tries not to think about Caleb’s wide eyes, before he turned away from her and ran, as far and as fast as he could.

She breathes out, slides her finger across the screen, and presses the button.

\--

Bodhi looks up at the helicarriers, burning, and thinks, viciously, _Good._ He hadn’t lived to see the Death Star destroyed, but he imagines it looked something like that.

Pierce sighs. “What a waste,” he says. “You, pilot--Radwan, wasn’t it? You’re going to fly me out of here, unless you want our good friend the Councilwoman dead on the floor.”

Bodhi clenches his jaw, glares at Pierce, but glances at Romanov, who mouths, _Idea. Go._

He lets Pierce take him by the arm.

“You know,” says Fury, “there was a time when I would’ve taken a bullet for you.”

“You already have,” says Pierce, smug as ever. “And you will again when it’s useful.”

A second later, Bodhi hears the sound of one of Romanov’s Widow’s Bites discharging, and Romanov collapses to the ground, the little weapon pinned to her jacket having shorted out. Bodhi elbows Pierce away from him, the man’s phone clattering from his hand before he can re-activate the pin, and takes cover.

Fury shoots Pierce dead.

\--

“Romanov--Romanov, wake up, please--”

“Romanov? _Natasha._ ”

Natasha opens her eyes. Fury and Radwan are peering down at her, and Radwan is gripping her good shoulder a little too tight, relaxing only when her eyes flutter open. She blinks up at them as her vision clears.

“Ouch,” she says, “those really do sting.”

\--

Cassian picks up his gun and shoots first.

Rumlow drops to the floor with a groan. Cassian looks up from him to the helicarrier about to crash into the building, then gets to his feet and _runs_ , tapping on his comm and screaming, “Rogue Three, Rogue Three, this is Rogue Leader, get that chopper in the air and _get me out of here!_ ”

“We’re in the air!” Bodhi says over the comm, as everything collapses around Cassian. He sprints around a table, slides out of the way of a falling beam, and tries not to think about how much Kaytoo is going to kill him for this. “Where are you?”

“Forty-first floor!” says Cassian. “Northwest corner!”

“We’re on our way, stay where you are!” Romanov cuts in.

“That is _not an option!_ ” screams Cassian, as the ceiling falls behind him. Rumlow’s dead by now, he’s sure, which is his only consolation, because the floor is breaking up under his feet and he’s not sure he’ll be able to survive a fall from _this_ height--

He leaps, breaking through the glass and ignoring the stinging pain. The helicopter leans on its side, _thank you Bodhi,_ and Cassian nearly falls out the other side from the momentum.

“Oh, fuck,” he says, dazed and disoriented, once Romanov pulls him into the helicopter. “Bodhi, thank fuck, you’re fine, where’s Jyn--Jen, where--”

“She hasn’t called in yet,” says Bodhi.

“I’m beginning to think we should just print the numbers on the outside of the building,” Fury mutters. “That’s twice in one week someone’s jumped out _through_ the glass.”

“Hill!” says Romanov. “Where’s Steve and Jen? We got a location on Rogers and Ehren?”

\--

Jyn breaks out of a glass window and lands, predictably, in a dumpster.

As landing pads go, a dumpster is not too bad. She’s got a bullet wound in her shoulder, her ankle is screaming in pain, her _other_ ankle doesn’t feel too good, and she’s in shock, but at least she had a soft landing.

“Jyn!”

 _That’s my name,_ Jyn thinks, for a moment, before she breathes out and, with effort, pulls herself up from the dumpster. Oh, yeah. Everything is falling down around her. The only consolation she’s got is that Arbor is dead, most likely.

She blinks.

Is that Baze and Chirrut and--

Hill, off in the distance, concentrating as hard as she can.

_Hill?_

Jyn looks up, and blinks again. There’s a giant chunk of building just floating above her, and it takes her a minute to realize, oh, yeah. That’s Hill. Hill is--Hill is _using the Force_ , okay, she’s never seen Hill do that before.

 _Trust the Force,_ her mother had said, once upon a time. Jyn thinks this was probably not how she meant.

Hill had been a Jedi. Jyn’s known that since she and the rest of her team were recruited into SHIELD, but knowing it is different from _seeing_ it, and she stares up at the floating rock in dumb shock before she shakes herself out of it, quietly cursing Arbor and also her blood loss.

“Jyn,” says Baze, getting to her first. “Little sister, are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” says Jyn, letting him and Chirrut pull her out and hold her up. “You guys--”

“We should get moving,” says Chirrut, calmly. “Before a building falls on us.”

“Wilson,” says Jyn, limping as fast as she can. “Where’s Wilson, I told him and an intern to get out, and Cassian, _where’s_ \--”

“They’re both safe,” says Chirrut. “Sam’s with Agent 13 right now, Cassian is with Bodhi and Romanov.”

\--

“We got Ehren,” says Hill, her voice crackling to life over the comm.

Alvarez, beside Natasha, breathes out, clearly relieved.

“What about Steve?” says Natasha.

The silence says everything that Natasha needs to know, everything that she didn’t want to hear.

\--

(Target: _Rogers, Steven Grant._ Threat level: 10, eliminate immediately--

_you’ve known me your whole life._

\--eliminate, eliminate _shut up shut up shut up_ \--

_your name is James Buchanan Barnes._

\--that’s not his name that’s not his name he knows what he is he is an asset he is nothing he is a weapon _eliminate, eliminate, shut up shut up **shut up**_ \--

_I’m not gonna fight you._

Target is unarmed.

_You’re my friend._

Target is unarmed, _eliminate_ , shut up shutupshutupshut _up_ \--stop it, stop talking, please, please, _please_ \--

“You’re my mission,” he snarls.

_Then finish it._

Eliminate target immediately--

_Because I’m with you till the end of the line._

Eliminate--

Eliminate--

_Bucky?_

_But I knew him._ )

\--

It takes an hour to find Captain Rogers on a riverbank. Cassian knows because he was there, combing through the Potomac for Rogers and any other survivors (ie: James Buchanan Barnes, also known as the Winter Soldier), and it’s Sam and Chirrut who find Captain America passed out on the shore.

“So,” says Jyn, once Rogers has been loaded into an ambulance. “That was a hellish week. Even for us.”

“You think?” says Cassian, dryly. Between the two of them, he’s probably the one better off, because Jyn’s gone and sprained both her ankles, broken a rib, and gotten shot in the shoulder. “And now we’re unemployed.”

“Right,” says Jyn, with a huff. “That.” She pauses, then says, “You know anything about Jenna Arbor?”

“No,” says Cassian, sitting down beside her. They’ve made it this time, he thinks, made it to this place where Jyn’s being patched up by a medical professional bitching at her for moving around too much and telling her to stay on bedrest for a while, where Baze and Chirrut and Hill are discussing the Force in hushed tones, where Bodhi’s exhaustedly sleeping off the adrenaline crash nearby. “Jenna _Zan_ Arbor, on the other hand--she was a scientist who used to work for the Separatists. Why?”

“They’re the same person,” Jyn says. “Chirrut was right. Again.”

“He was right about Rumlow too,” says Cassian, with a sigh. “And now--”

“We’re unemployed,” says Jyn. “Doesn’t mean we can’t still help.”

Cassian glances at her, and smiles. “So, what, a smaller, less funded version of the Avengers?” he says, dryly.

“I was thinking more like a smaller, less funded version of the Alliance,” says Jyn, with a huff. “The Avengers are incredibly public, after all. I don’t feel like stepping out into the spotlight just yet, what about you?”

“Fuck, no,” says Cassian, instantly. “I’d rather jump out a window.” Old spy instincts, he supposes.

“You and me both,” says Jyn, following with a little chuckle and then a wince. “You still with me?”

“All the way,” Cassian promises, brushing his fingers over hers.

\--

“You might not want to head inside just yet,” says Chirrut.

Baze pauses, keys hovering just in front of the keyhole. “Why not?” he asks, glancing to their apartment inside. It’s been a long week, and he just wants to sleep curled up next to Chirrut and face unemployment tomorrow.

“Because I can hear someone inside,” says Chirrut, cocking his head towards the door of their apartment.

Baze sticks the key in the keyhole, turns it, then very carefully opens the door, a hand on the gun holstered at his hip. Chirrut follows behind him, cane at the ready.

They step into the kitchen and find--nothing. Baze, as a precaution, opens their fridge, their cupboards, everything, while Chirrut’s hands sweep carefully over the counter, catching on a note.

“Well, at least he was kind enough to leave a note,” says Chirrut, as Baze takes it from him and squints at the letters--most of the note is in scratched-out Russian, but what Baze _can_ read of it says, _Sorry about your fridge._ “Did he say what his name was?”

“No,” says Baze, “but he didn’t need to. Some of this is in Russian.”

“Ah,” says Chirrut, understanding, blind eyes fixing on a point on the ceiling above them. “Barnes.”

“I’ll leave a message for Captain Rogers when he wakes,” says Baze, opening the fridge again and groaning. “In the meantime--we’ll have to get more groceries. _Again._ ”

“Perhaps we should buy extra food this time around,” says Chirrut. “Something tells me this won’t be the last we see of Barnes.” He doesn’t have to say what that _something_ is--Baze already knows it’s the Force.

Baze glances at the open window, the curtains fluttering in the wind, and mutters, “Oh, that’s just _great,_ ” with far less enthusiasm than Chirrut.

\--

“What the fuck are you doing here,” says Cassian, flicking the lights open to find Romanov, sitting on the couch. On Jyn’s favorite spot, which is just rude of her.

“I have a favor to ask,” says Romanov. “Which, yeah, sounds terrible, considering the whole unemployment thing.”

“On balance, I’d rather be unemployed than working for HYDRA unknowingly,” says Cassian, dryly, sitting down on the armchair. “What kind of favor is this?”

“I have a debt to Rogers,” says Romanov, simply, and Cassian can’t really fault her for that. “And he wants as much information on the Winter Soldier as he can get. I know some people back in Kiev who might have it, but--” She pauses, lets out a breath. “Well. I blew all my covers.”

“So you want my help,” says Cassian.

“I want your team’s help,” says Romanov. “I’d call Clint, but he’s a little too busy dealing with his own problems right now.” Problems wearing tracksuits, Cassian’s sure. “I need someone I know can cover my back. Rogers is out of the question, Carter’s going to the CIA, Sam’s nice, but he’s a soldier. Not a spy. Which leaves you.”

“That’s one hell of a favor to ask,” says Cassian, lacing his fingers together.

“Rogers is one hell of a kisser, what can I say,” says Romanov, as dry and secretive as ever, but Cassian knows loyalty when he hears it. Coming from Romanov, he’s almost surprised. “What do you say?”

“I’ll call them first,” says Cassian.

\--

He calls her a day later, on a burner phone, and says, “When do we start?”

**Author's Note:**

> Roz Solomon and Nance Winters are characters from 616 Marvel. Nance Winters was a brainwashed SHIELD agent afaik, thanks Marvel Wiki, and Roz Solomon is currently a supporting character in the ongoing Thor run. Roz will be back.
> 
> Jenna Zan Arbor is from the Legends timeline of Star Wars, as a mad scientist who worked under both the Separatists and then the Empire to try and understand the Force. as you can tell, that makes her p much perfect for HYDRA. she'll also be back to plague the Rogue One gang and Anakin, welp.


End file.
